Friday, February 4, 2011

Feb. 4 - Another cold morning but our upper level trof is moving out of our region to the east. An upper level ridge will then start to build.  Here is this morning's 500 mb upper level map showing the closed upper low now centered over Texas.
Our NMSU Coop temperature reading shows a low of -4F but that's due to the low temperatures from yesterday. At 7:30 am the temperature was 8F. So my guess is that our daily low (after midnight) was around 7 or 8 degrees. Below is this morning's MODIS image from Terra. Most of the lingering snow is in our eastern portion of the study region.
Wind patterns are typical of this type of trof with northeasterly winds aloft. Northeastly winds are from the positive tilt of the closed upper level low. The surface winds are starting to come out of the southwest in the afternoon after a cold core high pressure system sets up in Chihuahua that in effect blows wind toward the north. Winds are still light and doesn't allow much of the pollution to disperse. Folks may resort to wood burning because of the brown outs over the area.

The AQI forecast for today is calling for an area of moderate in the Paso del Norte.

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